Glen,
These are tough questions for many reasons. One is that a
behaviorists first instinct would be to wrestle with you over several of the
terms. The most explicit ethical stance I have seen a behaviorist take
as a behaviorist is Skinner's dislike of the
use of punishment, which was
at least
partially justified by the evidence that reinforcement will work better
at shaping behavior. That's not much, but its something. Ethics is a tough
business, and I'm not sure there has been much progress in the last 3-4,000
years, nevertheless the last 100.
I will say that behaviorist methods
have been shown to be effective at treating "thoughts" and "feelings". The
behaviorist conceives of what they are doing in such cases in ways most will
find unintuitive, but the techniques work irrespective (the whole philosophy
vs. science distinction). Behaviorist's CAN do things for pain management, in
no small part because behavioral control is often important in pain control.
Aside from that, nothing about behaviorism bars giving drugs, so its not like
they would say "I'm a behaviorist, I don't believe in morphine drips." (Of
course, being a behaviorist leads one to think there are often better
alternatives to drugs, but that is a different point.)
Overall though, I
think that the distinction between mentalist and behaviorist does not place one
with specific ethical obligations any more than a distinction between
string-theorist and quantum-mechanist has ethical implications. Sure, there are
people who write as if quantum mechanics has ethical implications (inherent
uncertainty, blah, blah, blah), but I'm not convinced it does. I suspect that
it just so happens that the same person is interested in both subjects.
--explanation (sort-of)--
The question of what we think people are
doing when they verbally self-report does not tell us what to do after getting
the self reports, unless we throw in lots of other rules and assumptions. When
we get all that other stuff figured out, we are likely to find that the first
part isn't as important as it initially appeared.
For example, I like
to point out to my class that the result of introspection is what it obviously
is: When you attend the things you say to yourself, <drum roll> you find
out what types of things you say to yourself. So, the guy at the Thai
restaurant asks, "How spicy do you want it?" You think for a second and
say "As high as you can go!" All I learn from that (at best) is that you are
the type of person who tells yourself you want it as spicy as possible - I
don't learn whether or not you are ACTUALLY the type of person who likes it
spicy as possible. If it is your first time at a Thai restaurant, you might
well learn something new about yourself.
Transport to the Alzheimer's
patient. You ask "Do you know where you are?" The patient thinks for a second
and says "Yes." I assert that we learned nothing more than that he is the type
of person who tells himself he knows where he is. In this case, I have evidence
that others agree with me. The typical follow up question is "Where are you?"
Often it is answered incorrectly. We, as outside observers of the patient's
behavior declare that he does not know where he is, despite his insistence
otherwise.
Again, I can think of ways to take that, add other stuff,
and create ethical implicature... but on its own, I'm not sure it has much. If
we decide, for example, that we have an obligation to care for people so
damaged that they don't even know where they are... well, behaviorists and
mentalists might argue over how to tell if people know where they are, but the
eventual ethical course of action has already been laid out.
Eric
On Tue, May 4, 2010 08:14 PM,
"glen e. p.
ropella" <[hidden email]> wrote:
I'm changing the subject line again because this is _not_ in direct
lineage with the [Beat Poet] thread.
Nicholas Thompson wrote circa 10-05-04 02:36 PM:
> Most of the questions you ask are orthogonal to behaviorism/mentalism.
>
> Children are a special case because they cannot give consent. But notice
> that the whole question of the Treatment Program you described arises
> because the State and The Guardians of the children are at odds as to
> whether the treatment is cruelty. So everybody is using behavioral
> criteria.
Sorry, I was working under the idea that "cruelty" was a purely mental
construct. It seems to me that a cruel act is one where, in general,
the actor disregards the thoughts and feelings of the acted upon
(actee)
and, especially, where the thoughts and feelings of the actee are the
Spinozan "Sadness" (i.e. the hypothetical mind is in a worse
state after
the thoughts/feelings). Granted, the vernacular use of "cruel"
has
connotations of deriving pleasure from actions that cause the
"Sadness";
but that's not necessary. I think it's sufficient for the actor to
_know_ they're causing "Sadness", even if the actor (rightly or
wrongly)
believes that "Sadness" is somehow arithmetically
(economically)
compensated for by a greater "Joy" that will ensue from the actions.
The essence of my naive understanding of Behaviorism is: "Take whatever
tangible actions work and the intangibles will take care of themselves."
Of course, _if_ a novel tangible arises, the Behaviorist _will_ take it
into account. But it still leaves the Behaviorist open to the criticism
that she intentionally, knowingly takes actions that cause "Sadness".
I don't mean to descend into the semantics of "cruelty". I'm just
trying to show why I don't think the criticism of the JRC's methods and
the JRC's response are orthogonal to the mentalism <-> behaviorism axis.
It seems that some people hold the short-term mental state of the actees
in higher esteem than the JRC. I.e. the JRC are more purely
behaviorist. (And if we take them at their word, the JRC isn't
intentionally cruel and their methods do, indeed, work.)
> Adults are the more interesting case: is it cruelty when an adult signs on
> for it? Is sending a volunteer to war, cruel? Is sending a conscript to
> war, cruel? If I ask to have me teeth worked on without anaesthetic, is
> the doctor who performs the procedure cruel?
Like I say above, I'm not trying to _parse_ the word "cruel" so much
as
I'm trying to get at the extent to which a Behaviorist (a real one...
not some ideologically stereotyped one) considers the thoughts and
emotions of her subject. A clarifying question might be something like:
When the actee tells the (behaviorist) Dentist to drill out the root
of
a tooth without anesthetic, does the Dentist explain in very clear
terms: "You will FEEL pain and probably hate me afterwards."?? Or
does
the Dentist ignore such intangibles (except to the extent they have to
strap the patient down more firmly ;-) and merely state the actions
she'll take?
(My dad could've been described as a behaviorist when he'd hit me after
behaving badly. He didn't much care what I thought or felt as long as I
stopped behaving badly. [grin])
> The only place where my behaviorism might have a role to play in such a
> discussion is where i would deny to the "victim" the right to
disavow his
> own pain. I would argue that I have my own responibility to decide
> whether a man is in pain, even if he claims he is not, and to make an
> ethical decision accordingly.
This seems too coarse to me. Clearly, if the actor understands more
about the cause-effect behaviors than the actee, then the actor gets to
decide whether the "Sadness" is fully compensated by the subsequent
"Joy" effected. But, regardless of that, how much _respect_ does the
behaviorist actor give to the subjective experience of the actee?
This is very important in situations like Alzheimer's disease or pain
management, where we have no credible treatments to actually fix the
problem. We only have treatments to treat the symptoms, for example the
epiphenomenal thoughts and feelings of the subject.
Do behaviorists subscribe to concepts like pain management? Do
behaviorists participate in treatments like end-of-life hospice care?
Or do they restrict themselves to actions that have been credibly shown
to "fix" behavior?
--
glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095, http://agent-based-modeling.com
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